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Recent Articles

NAMUR NE 107 recommendations come to the United States

Diagnostic data served where operators and maintenance techs can use it.

Identify the symptoms of equipment failure

Production automation and control networks provide diagnostic data to get to the root of the cause.

Product Roundup: Manufacturing controls and automation

Instrumentation and controls make plants more efficient.

Upgrade of legacy control system can improve productivity

Legacy upgrade: Optimize production flow and ROI with control system investments.

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White Papers: In Depth Research

The ISA S88 standard: A roadmap for automation — A powerful management tool
Posted: 08/29/2011
This paper explains the purpose and benefits of ISA's S88 standard and its role as both an engineering guideline and an often overlooked management tool. Because detailed description of the standard's underlying technology frequently obscures the intrinsic value of the standard itself, this paper is not intended to be a tutorial on S88 technology. Rather, the intent is to help the reader understand what S88 is and where it is useful or, perhaps, essential. The focus is on how it can be used to reduce cost and improve the way a manufacturing process operates. Why S88 is important is emphasized along with how it can serve as a common language for better communication about automation opportunities and manufacturing requirements. It includes ways this modular and internally consistent standard can help reduce engineering cost and serve as a management tool, ways it can be used to help control capital expenditure, enable more precise definition of operational requirements, identify what should and should not be automated and aid in definition of optimum levels of automation.

An application of IEEE 1588 to industrial automation
Posted: 08/15/2011
This paper describes an application of the IEEE 1588 standard for industrial automation. Key application use cases are identified that can benefit time-based control techniques and improve performance results over traditional control methods. This paper will also briefly discuss how the 1588 standard may be adopted to suit these applications. Application problems specific to industrial automation are enumerated and candidate solutions described.

Guidelines for industrial Ethernet infrastructure implementation: A control engineer's guide
Posted: 08/01/2011
As part of a continuing effort to make their organizations more efficient and flexible, manufacturers are rapidly migrating to industrial Ethernet technology to network their industrial automation and control systems. The use of standard Ethernet technology enables organizations to control costs by moving from costly plant-optimized networks to a proven technology that is simpler to integrate, requires widely available skills, and is more secure and reliable while still meeting real-time traffic requirements.

This white paper provides an overview of Ethernet technology and implementation guidelines to implement in the both control and information networking environment. It discusses the requirements and consideration in implementing a switched Ethernet architecture in industrial networking environments.

Effectively applying the total cost of ownership equation to the process automation industries
Posted: 06/20/2011
Acronyms abound in the manufacturing industries. These common three-letter symbols are everywhere from process equations, to annual reports, to vendor product names. Many industry professionals know them by reference, but how many of these acronyms are actually well defined and understood?

This document will decode the background behind one of the manufacturing industries' most-commonly used, yet rarely fully understood, acronyms: TCO. Otherwise known as total cost of ownership.

TCO has been likened to other acronyms such as ROI (return on investment), TBO (total benefits of ownership), TCA (total cost of acquisition) and in some cases, TVO (total value of ownership). With all of these interpretations abounding, it's easy to see why many don't fully grasp the concept of TCO. All indications, however, point to TCO becoming a greater factor in the future of the process industries as manufacturers are constantly tasked with producing higher-quality products using fewer resources. Maximizing monetary resources will go a long way towards achieving this — which means it would behoove most companies to have as tight a grasp on the concept of TCO as possible.

The most critical truth to realize is that a longer product lifecycle means a lower TCO that a company can expect to pay each year.

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